Top Doubles Seeds Advance to USTA US Open Collegiate Wild Card Finals; Southern California Popular Choice in ITA D-I Women's Kickoff Draft; ITA Announces All Player of Year Awards; Lumpkin Robinson Tapped to Lead Illinois; Top Seeds Out in Irvine $15Ks
Doubles competition took center stage today at the USTA's American Collegiate US Open Wild Card Playoffs at the National Campus in Lake Nona, with the two favorites posting impressive straight-sets victories. There was again a delay in the start due to rain, but it was less than an hour in duration.
Defending champions Reese Brantmeier and Alanis Hamilton of North Carolina defeated Vanderbilt's Valeria Ray and Bridget Stammel 6-3, 6-2 to return to the final. A familiar face will be across the net Thursday evening in Auburn's DJ Bennett, who reached the doubles final in last year's playoff with Ava Hrastar. This year Bennett is playing with Ava Esposito, and the No. 2 seeds reached the final with a nearly three-hour, 6-3, 2-6, 7-6(5) victory over Michigan's Jessica Bernales and Lily Jones. Last year's final was even longer, with Brantmeier and Hamilton coming away with a 4-6, 7-6(4), 7-6(5) victory over Bennett and Hrastar in three-hours and 35-minutes.
With Brantmeier also playing in the singles final, the schedule has been adjusted, with the women's singles final, men's singles final and men's doubles final all at 5:30 p.m. Brantmeier and Hamilton will then play the women's doubles final, not before 6:30 p.m., and most likely, significantly later than that.
2025 NCAA doubles finalists Brandon Carpico and Nikita Filin of Ohio State, the top seeds, defeated Northwestern's Greyson Casey and Carter Pate 6-3, 6-2 to advance to the men's doubles final. They will face another Big Ten team in Indiana's Michael Andre and Matteo Antonescu, who defeated No. 2 seeds Alex Chang and Alexander Razeghi 7-6(4), 6-4.
Filin, the 2024 Kalamazoo 18s champion (with Razeghi), will be looking to return to New York with another wild card into men's doubles, while Brantmeier will be aiming for her third main draw appearance in women's doubles, after winning the 2022 San Diego 18s title and last year's playoff.
Thursday's schedule:5:30 p.m.
Women's singles final:
Reese Brantmeier[1](UNC) v Katrina Scott[2](Tennessee)
The ITA Women's Division I Kickoff Draft was held today, with teams ranked 17-84 at the recent season's end deciding which of the 14 host sites they would like to travel to as they look to earn a spot in the 2027 ITA Team Indoor Championships in February.
Because hosts Michigan and Ohio State finished the year inside the Top 16, neither host needed the automatic qualification, giving No. 17 Arizona State the first choice among the 16 sites. The Sun Devils chose the University of Southern California, as did No. 18 Florida, with No. 25 Clemson the fourth team traveling to Los Angeles. Despite that formidable quartet of teams, USC, which finished the season ranked 13, was not the first host site to fill up. That honor belongs to crosstown rival UCLA, ranked 15th, who had No. 20 UCF, No. 21 TCU and No. 22 Cal elect to head to Westwood.
No. 16 Vanderbilt will also host three Top 35 teams, with No. 19 Tennessee, No. 28 Stanford and No. 33 Arizona heading to Nashville.
Three Top 50 seeds passed, electing not to participate in the Kickoff Weekend and therefore not eligible to play the Team Indoor Championships: No. 31 Notre Dame, No. 43 Ole Miss and No. 47 Iowa.
Top teams who were not attractive to those in draft postitions were NC State(No. 8), Pepperdine(No. 9) and Auburn (No. 2), and many teams passed rather than go as a No. 4 seed to a top team, with No. 84 North Alabama the last participant, as the No. 4 seed at North Carolina.
The complete list of women's teams that will be competing at the 16 sites January 22-24, 2027, can be found here.
The men's draft begins Thursday at noon, and can be followed here.
The Division I ITA Player of Year Awards, which weren't included in yesterday's announcement, were confirmed today in the ITA's release of its POY winners in all divisions: wheelchair, community college, California community college, NAIA, Division III, Division II and Division I. The complete list can be found here.
One of the few Division I head coaching positions open this spring has been filled, with the University of Illinois announcing Elizabeth Lumpkin Robinson as the new leader of the women's program in Champaign Urbana. Lumpkin Robinson, who played at UCLA, spent the past three years as head coach at University of Illinois-Chicago; before that she was an assistant/associate head coach at Oregon.
Both top seeds were upset today in Irvine California, the fourth stop on the seven-week SoCal Pro Series joint $15K tournaments.
Kaylan Bigun(UCLA), who won the M15 titles in Week One in Lakewood and Week Three in Los Angeles, was beaten in the first round today by recent Yale graduate Vignesh Gogineni 3-6, 6-4, 6-1.
In the first round of the W15, Sofia Shapatava of Georgia, who was also the top seed last week and also lost in the first round in Los Angeles, dropped a 7-5, 6-1 decision to 18-year-old Isabella Marton of Canada today.
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